“The Crush” Mansion

Another Vancouver location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest two weeks ago was the supposed Seattle-area mansion where Adrian Forrester (aka Alicia Silverstone) lived with her parents in the 1993 movie The Crush.  And while I can’t say that I was a huge fan of the thriller/drama, because Alicia Silverstone grew up in the same relatively small city that I did – a suburb of San Francisco named San Mateo – The Crush has always held a special place in my heart.  Especially because it was one of Alicia’s very first acting roles.

Before landing her leading role in The Crush at the age of 15, Alicia’s only other major onscreen appearance had been a bit part in the Season 5 episode of The Wonder Years titled “Road Test” (pictured above).  She was still attending San Mateo High School when her Wonder Years episode aired, but by the time she was cast in The Crush she had left school permanently to pursue acting and the entire city of San Mateo was abuzz with the news of the local girl who made good.  I can still remember when the movie was released and the furor it caused in my hometown.  Not only did Alicia fly her two best friends out to L.A. for the big Hollywood premiere (as detailed in a huge article in our local paper that I still have a copy of somewhere), but pretty much her entire class headed over to our local movie theatre, Fashion Island Cinemas, on the day the movie opened to watch.  The theatre was completely sold out and there was a big party afterwards.  From what I remember, Alicia was in attendance, as well.  I went to a different high school, so I was not invited to the viewing, but one of my good friends, who knew Alicia fairly well, got to attend and I can distinctly remember calling him up later that night and pretty much hanging on his every word as he described the evening to me.  Oh, how I would have LOVED to have been there!  But I digress.

So, when fellow stalker Owen mentioned that he had managed to track down several of the locations featured in The Crush, I just HAD to stalk all of them – in honor of my hometown.  🙂  And the locale that I was most excited about stalking, of course, was the ginormous mansion where the Forrester family lived in the flick.  Owen found the residence thanks to one of the movie’s location assistants, who happened to remember the name of the street where it was located.  From there Owen used Google Street View to determine its exact location.  YAY!  Thank you, Owen! In real life, the Crush mansion, which is known as “The Disher House”, was constructed in 1912 by British architect Paul Phipps.  The home, which is absolutely beautiful in person, was originally built for a financier named J.B. Johnson, but is named after the Disher family, who lived there from 1916 through 1972.  You can read more about the mansion in the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Guidebook for their 2003 Open Vancouver Heritage House Tour here.  And you can take a peek at some close-up photographs of the home here.

I am very happy to report that the Disher house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in The Crush, but unfortunately there is quite a bit foliage in the front yard that limits the view of the property from the street.  Both the interior and the exterior of the residence were used in the flick.

Sadly, the apartment that Nick Eliot (aka Cary Elwes) rented does not exist in real life.  Producers had it built on top of the home’s real life garage exclusively for the filming and it was subsequently removed after the filming had wrapped.

The Forrester’s neighbor’s pool, which shows up a couple of times in The Crush, is located in the backyard of the home that is directly east of the Crush mansion.  Apparently, the pool was the site of a deleted scene during which Adrian and Nick take a midnight dip.  That scene is later referred by Adrian when she is being examined by an officer at the police station after falsely accusing Nick of rape.

UPDATE – The Crush mansion is for sale!  You can check out some interior photographs of it here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Adrian Forrester’s house from The Crush is located at 1526 Angus Drive in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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